Email Marketing Makes a Difference for Early Shoppers December 03, 2019, | Posted by erin

Fears of a lackluster holiday shopping season have already been proven to be overblown, with a strong showing for online sales starting Black Friday and continuing through Cyber Monday. Email marketing has been a particularly strong driver of profits for brands of all sizes, demonstrating the importance of the channel when it comes to keeping customers connected and bringing conversions. Site Impact has been following the developments enthusiastically; we’ve known for some time that email has the greatest possible potential for keeping consumers engaged, and this year’s results underscore the importance of the channel throughout the shopping season.

Early shoppers leaned hard on emails

Of course, there are always a percentage of shoppers who get to work on their lists before Thanksgiving even arrives, so the real tracking for email and for sales starts in November, and the early signs are very strong indeed. Early shoppers leaned hard on email this year, starting in the first week of the month and increasing steadily through Thanksgiving weekend. Email provided a lot of pre-planning for such early birds, with several major ecommerce vendors utilizing the medium for shopping guides and other informative pieces aimed at giving early shoppers the best possible ideas--one suggestion that we’ve made as a valuable piece of marketing for brands of all sizes. Early shoppers also looked to email for important last-minute offers like free shipping and added discounts, benefitting both consumers and brands. This is a big sign for brands who are still on the fence when it comes to devoting precious holiday marketing budget to email; it’s a key indicator that the medium is a win for capturing those coveted early prospects.

Email influence is growing in marketing efforts

As the numbers come in, brands are relying more and more on email, because it works. Amazon and several other major vendors put a lot of their weight behind email compared to paid search or social media, when it comes to Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. SMBs are starting to catch on, too: email as a share of the budget for early holiday shopping marketing efforts has increased in 2019 year over year, according to a recent report from Adobe. It’s not hard to see why: email brings the deals directly to the audience, and gives them an easily actionable step to go from interest to conversion. With the advent of mobile email, it’s even more vital: not only are consumers buying online from emails, they’re also carrying the emails with them into brick-and-mortar locations to get the best possible deal.

Email marketing is quickly gaining ground as the preferred method of communicating with prospects during the holiday shopping season, and it’s not shocking why: early shoppers and holiday procrastinators alike prefer it as a channel, and brands are beginning to respond, loading up on buying and shopping guides early in the month of November and launching campaigns aimed at both those who want to do all their shopping online as well as those who want the flexibility of shopping in-store. While brands should certainly make sure to reach out to prospects in every way that is feasible--certainly don’t leave prospects out in the cold--email is increasingly the preferred method, and looking at the figures, it’s not hard to see why.